The turmoil inside
Courtney Love once was everybody’s favorite rock ‘n’ roll bad girl.
Her mood swings, raunchy comments and blistering feuds were exactly what we expected from the widow of Kurt Cobain.
But lately, her exploits have spun wildly from impish and naughty into destructive and pitiable. Love is engulfed in a swarm of legal and emotional problems that have paralyzed her career and torn apart her family.
Love faces no fewer than four drug and assault cases in California. On July 9, her 40th birthday — and a day she was due to appear in court on assault charges — a bizarre call to the police wound up with a disheveled Love handcuffed to a stretcher and entering Bellevue Hospital for an involuntary 72-hour stay.
Love’s attorney, Michael Rosenstein, said she was hospitalized for “a gynecological medical condition.” There were reports that Love told police she’d had an abortion, while a caller to 911 said she’d had a miscarriage. But a source within Love’s camp says that medical tests showed she was not pregnant.
She remains hospitalized, Rosenstein said after a court hearing Thursday.
Gone is the confident, surgically enhanced Love who strode the red carpet at the premiere of “The People vs. Larry Flynt” in 1996. Back then, it looked like she had beaten many of her demons, but recent photos of her echo the turmoil inside.
“Physically, she looks different, like someone who’s severely depressed,” said Dr. Patricia Farrell, a psychologist who specializes in anxiety disorders.
“She’s been hit with a lot of life-changing circumstances,” added Farrell, who hasn’t been involved in Love’s treatment. “It’s the 10th anniversary of her husband’s death, she’s turning 40 and her daughter has been taken away. All of this at once is huge for anybody to try to deal with.”
Love’s legal problems caused California authorities last October to revoke her custody of Frances Bean, her 11-year-old daughter with Cobain. She has also lost the summer tour that had been planned to promote her first solo album, the ironically titled “America’s Sweetheart.”
Making matters worse, Love claims that former financial advisers defrauded her of millions of dollars.
Those close to the singer are worried that her wild streak has only been inflamed by her dependence on drugs, such as the painkiller OxyContin, which is at the center of her court cases.
When Love launched “America’s Sweetheart,” she promoted it with a round of bizarre appearances that found her flashing David Letterman and allegedly hitting a fan with a microphone stand. It was hard to tell if her behavior was an act or the first sign that she had finally gone out of control.
“Some people suggested that she was getting in character for a record that was coming out,” says Andy Pemberton, editor in chief of Blender magazine. “She was being a rock ‘n’ roll star.
“The record was a disaster and nobody bought it,” Pemberton says. “If she was hoping to sell records, it didn’t work. And it sort of finished her career, because now people are more interested in her as a tabloid figure than as a musician.”
Experts say intensive rehabilitation and therapy are the only things that can bring Love back from the brink but add that help is the last thing she’ll ask for.
“People like her are extraordinarily emotionally immature,” according to Dr. Sheenah Hankin, a psychotherapist who says Love’s behavior resembles that of a typical “borderline personality disorder.”
“These people throw tantrums and don’t take care of themselves at all,” she adds. “When they’re in a crisis, they don’t seek help, they just freak out.”
Love’s hectic history
1976: She is arrested for the first time, for shoplifting, at age 12.
1986: Makes her screen debut in Alex Cox’s “Sid and Nancy,” the story of Sex Pistols star Sid Vicious.
1989: Starts rock band Hole and meets her future husband, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.
February 1992: Love and Cobain marry.
August 1992: Frances Bean is born to the couple. Washington State’s Child Protective Services immediately starts investigation because of the pair’s high-profile use of drugs. Love and Cobain retain custody.
April 1994: Cobain commits suicide by shooting himself. At the same time, Love is arrested after taking a near-fatal drug overdose.
March 1995: Love is arrested on a complaint by two teenagers who say she punched them at a Hole concert in Orlando, Fla. The charges are dismissed.
June 1995: Love collapses at home. She blames an adverse reaction to a sleeping drug.
1996: Plays the tragic, drug-fueled wife of pornography tycoon Larry Flynt in Milos Forman’s film “The People vs. Larry Flynt.” Earns a Golden Globe nomination for best actress and awards from critics in New York, Boston and Chicago.
February 2003: Arrested in London for allegedly verbally abusing cabin staff on a Virgin Atlantic flight from Los Angeles. She is later released.
October 2003: Arrested when cocaine and opiates are allegedly found in her system after she is accused of attempting to break into the home of former manager and boyfriend Jim Barber. Police later reportedly find prescription drugs in her home, and she is treated for a suspected overdose of painkillers. Her daughter, 11-year-old Frances, is taken by Los Angeles County child services workers.
November 2003: Voluntarily checks into rehab.
March 2004: Accused of assaulting an audience member with a microphone stand at a Manhattan nightclub.
April 2004: Booked after being accused of striking singer Kristin King in the head with a liquor bottle and a metal flashlight in Barber’s California home.
July 9, 2004: On her 40th birthday, a warrant is issued for her arrest after she fails to appear in court for arraignment on the King assault charge. She’s later taken to a hospital in handcuffs after an incident at her SoHo apartment.